EULOGY 



UEl. IVEREll AT T II K 



DEDICATION OF THE STATUE 



/ 

da:^iel webstek 



IN BOSTON, SEPTEMBER 17, 18j'J. 



/ 

v/ 

BY EDWARD EVERETT. 



BOSTON: 

GEO. C. RAND AND AVERY, CITY PRINTERS, 

NO. 3CORNUILL,, 

1859. 



£7^4-0 



<^ 



EULOGY. 



May it please Your Excellency: 

On behalf of those by whose contributions the 
Statue of Mr. Webster has been procured, and of 
the Committee entrusted with the care of its erec- 
tion, it is my pleasing duty to return to you, and 
through you to the Legislature of the Common- 
w^ealth, our dutiful acknowledgments for the per- 
mission kindly accorded to us, to place the statue 
in the Public Grounds. We feel, sir, that in allow- 
ing this monumental work to be erected in front 
of the Capitol of the State, a distinguished honor 
has been paid to the memory of Mr. Webster. 

To you, sir, in particular, whose influence was 
liberally employed to bring about this result, and 
whose personal attendance and participation have 
added so much to the interest of the day, we are 
under the highest obligations. 

To you, also, Mr. Mayor, and to the City Council, 
we return our cordial thanks for your kind consent 
to act on our behalf, in delivering this cherished 
memorial of our honored fellow-citizen into the cus- 



tody of the Commonwealth, and for your sympathy 
and assistance m the duties of the occasion. 

To you. our distinguished guests, and to you, 
fellow-citizens of either sex, who come to unite with 
us in rendering these monumental honors, who adorn 
the occasion with your presence, and cheer us with 
your countenance and favor, we tender a respectful 
and grateful welcome. 

The inclemency of the weather has made a change 
in our arrangements for your reception necessary, 
and compelled us to flee from the public grounds 
to this spacious hall. But we will not murmur at 
this slight inconvenience. We are not the oiily 
children for whom the Universal Parent cares. The 
rain, which has incommoded and disappointed us, is 
most welcome to the husbandman and the farmer. 
It will yield their last fulness to the maturing 
fruits and grains; it will clothe the parched fields 
with autumnal verdure, and revive the failing pas- 
turage ; it will replenish the exhausted springs, and 
thus promote the comfort of beast and of man. 
We have no reason to lament that while, with these 
simple ceremonies, we dedicate the statue of Daniel 
Webster within these walls, the work of human hands, 
the genial skies are baptizing it with gentle showers, 
beneath the arch of heaven. 

It has been the custom, from the remotest an- 
tiipiity, to preserve and to hand down to posterity. 



in bronze and in marble, the counterfeit presentment 
of illustrious men. Within the last few years, mod- 
ern research has brought to light, on the banks of 
the Tigris, huge slabs of alabaster, buried for ages, 
which exhibit in relief the faces and the persons 
of men who governed the primeval East in the 
gray dawn of history. Three thousand years have 
elapsed since they lived and reigned, and built pal- 
aces, and fortified cities, and waged war, and gained 
victories, of which the trophies are carved upon 
these monumental tablets, — the triumphal procession, 
the chariots laden with spoil, the drooping captive, 
the conquered monarch in chains, — but the legends 
inscribed upon the stone are imperfectly deciphered, 
and little beyond the names of the personages and 
the most general tradition of their exploits is pre- 
served. In like manner the obelisks and the temples 
of ancient Egypt are covered with the sculptured 
images of whole dynasties of Pharaohs, — older than 
Moses, older than Joseph, — whose titles are recorded 
in the hieroglyphics, with which the granite is 
charged, and which are gradually yielding up their 
long concealed mysteries to the sagacity of modern 
criticism. The plastic arts, as they passed into Hel- 
las, with all the other arts which give grace and 
dignity to our nature, reached a perfection unknown 
to Egypt or Assyria; and the heroes and sages of 
Greece and Rome, immortalized by the sculptor, still 



8 



people the galleries and inuseuins of the modern 
world. In every succeeding age, and in every 
country in which the line arts have been cultivated, 
the respect and allection of survivors have found a 
pure and rational gratification in the historical por- 
trait and the monumental statue of the honored 
and loved in private life, and especially of the great 
and good who have deserved well of their country. 
Public esteem and confidence and private affection, 
the gratitude of the community and the fond mem- 
ories of the fireside, have ever sought, in this way, 
to prolong the sensible existence of their Ijeloved 
and respected objects. What, though the dear and 
honored features and person, on which, while living, 
we never gazed without tenderness or veneration, 
have been taken from us: — somethins; of the love- 
liness, something of the majesty abides in the por- 
trait, the bust, and the statue. The heart, bereft of 
the living originals, turns to them, and cold and silent 
as they are, they strengthen and animate the cher- 
ished recollections of the loved, the honored, and 
the lost. 

The skill of the painter and sculptor which thus 
comes in aid of the memory and imasi-ination, is, in 
its highest degree, one of the rarest, as it is one 
of the most ex(|uisite accomplishments within our 
attainment, and in its perfection as seldom witnessed 
as the perfection of speech or of music. The plas- 



9 



tic hand must be moved by the same ethereal in- 
stinct as the eloquent lips or the recording pen. 
The number of those who, in the language of Mi- 
chael Angelo, can discern the finished statue in the 
heart of the shapeless block, and bid it start into 
artistic life, — who are endowed with the exquisite 
gift of moidding the rigid bronze or the lifeless 
marble into graceful, majestic, and expressive forms, 
is not greater than the number of those who are 
able, with equal majesty, grace, and expressiveness, 
to make the spiritual essence, — the finest shades of 
thought and feeling, — sensible to the mind, through 
the eye and the ear, in the mysterious embodiment 
of the written and the spoken word. If Athens 
in her palmiest ^ays had but one Pericles, she had 
also but one Phidias. 

Nor are these beautiful and noble arts, by which 
the face and the form of the departed are pre- 
served to us, — calling into the highest exercise as 
they do all the imitative and idealizing powers of 
the painter and scidptor, — the least instructive of 
our teachers. The portraits and the statues of the 
honored dead, kindle the generous ambition of the 
youthful aspirant to flime. Themistocles could not 
sleep for the trophies in the Ceramicus ; and when 
the living Demosthenes to whom you, sir, (Mr. Fel- 
ton,) have alluded, had ceased to speak, the stony 
lips remained to rebuke and exhort his degenerate 



10 

countrymen. More than a liundred years have 
elapsed since the great Newton passed away ; but 
from age to age his statue by Roubillac, in the 
ante-chapel of Trinity College, will give distinctness 
to the conceptions formed of him by hundreds and 
thousands of ardent youthful spirits, filled with rev- 
erence for that transcendent intellect which, from 
the phenomena that fall within our limited vision, 
deduced the imperial law by which the Sovereign 
Mind rules the entire universe. We can never look 
on the person of Washington, but his serene and 
noble countenance, perpetuated by the pencil and 
the chisel, is fjimiliar to far greater multitudes than 
ever stood in his living presence, and will be thus 
familiar to the latest generation. 

What parent, as he conducts his son to Mount 
Auburn or to Bunker Hill, will not, as he pauses 
before their monumental statues, seek to heighten 
his reverence for virtue, for patriotism, for science, 
for learning, for devotion to the public good, as he 
bids him contemplate the form of that grave and 
venerable Winthrop, who left his pleasant home in 
England to come and found a new republic in this 
untrodden wilderness ; of that ardent and intrepid 
Otis, who first struclv out the spark of American 
indejiendence ; of that noble Adams, its most elo- 
quent champion on the floor of Congress; of that 
martvr Warren, who laid down his life in its de- 



11 



fence; of that self-taught Bowditeh, who, without a 
guide, threaded the starry mazes of the heavens; 
of that Story, honored at home and abroad as one 
of the brightest knninaries of the law, and, by a 
felicity of which I believe there is no other example, 
admirably portrayed in marble by his son ? What 
citizen of Boston, as he accompanies the stranger 
around our streets, guiding him through our busy 
thoroughfares, to our wharfs, crowded with vessels 
which range every sea and gather the produce of 
every climate, up to the dome of this capitol, which 
commands as lovely a landscape as can delight the 
eye or gladden the heart, will not, as he calls his 
attention at last to the statues of Franklin and 
Webster, exclaim: — "Boston takes pride in her nat- 
ural position, she rejoices in her beautiful environs, 
she is grateful for her material prosperity ; but richer 
than the merchandise stored in palatial warehouses, 
greener than the slopes of sea-girt islets, lovelier 
than this encircling panorama of land and sea. of 
field and hamlet, of lake and stream, of garden and 
grove, is the memory of her sons, native and adopted ; 
the character, services and fame of those who have 
benefited and adorned their day and generation. 
Our children, and the schools at which they are 
trained, our citizens, and the services they have ren- 
dered: — these are our monuments, these are our 
jewels, these our abiding treasures." 



12 



Yes, your long rows of quarried granite, may 
crumble to the dust ; the cornhelds in yonder vil- 
lages, ripening to the sickle, may, like the plains of 
stricken Lombardy, a few weeks ago, be kneaded 
into bloody clods by the madding wheels of artil- 
lery; this populous city, like the old cities of 
Etruria and the Campagna Romana, may be deso- 
lated by the pestilence wdiich w\alketh in darkness, 
may decay with the lapse of time, and the busy 
mart, which now rings with the joyous din of 
trade, become as lonely and still as Carthage or 
Tyre, as Babylon and Nineveh ; but the names of 
the great and good shall survive the desolation 
and the ruin ; the memory of the wise, the brave, 
the patriotic, shall never perish. Yes, Sparta is a 
wheat-field : — a Bavarian prince holds court at the 
foot of the Acropolis ; — the travelling virtuoso digs 
for marbles in the Roman Forum and beneath the 
ruins of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus ; but 
Lycurgus and Leonidas, and Miltiades and Demos- 
thenes, and Cato and Tully " still live " ; and he 
still lives, and all the great and good shall live in 
the heart of ages, while marble and bronze shall 
endure ; and w^hen marble and bronze have per- 
ished, they shall "still live" in memory, so long as 
men shall reverence Law, and honor Patriotism, 
and love Liberty. 






EULOGIES AT THE TIME OF MR. WEBSTER's DECEASE. 

Seven j^ears, within a few weeks, have passed 
since he, whose statue we inaugurate to-day, was 
taken from us. The voice of respectful and affec- 
tionate eulogy, which was uttered in this vicinity 
and city at the time, was promptly echoed through- 
out the country. The tribute paid to his memory, 
by friends, neighbors, and fellow-citizens, was re- 
sponded to from the remotest corners of the Republic 
by those who never gazed on his noble countenance, 
or listened to the deep melody of his voice. This 
city, which in early manhood he chose for his 
home; his associates in the honorable profession of 
which he rose to be the acknowledged head ; the law 
school of the neighboring university speaking by 
the lips of one so well able to do justice to his 
legal preeminence ; the college at which he was 
educated and whose chartered privileges he had 
successfully maintained before the highest tribunal 
of the country; with other bodies and other eulo- 
gists, at the bar, in the pulpit, and on the platform, 
throughout the Union, in numbers, greater I believe 
than have ever spoken on any other similar occa- 
sion, except that of the death of Washington, 
joined with the almost unanimous Press of the 
country, in one chorus of admiration of his talents. 



14 



recognition of his patriotic services, and respect and 
allection lor his memory. 

Nor have these oileriugs been made at his tomb 
alone. Twice or thrice since his death, once within 
a few montlis. — the anniversary of his birthday, has 
called forth, at the table of patriotic festivity, the 
voice of fervid eulogy and affectionate commemo- 
ration. In this way and on these occasions, his 
character has been delineated by those best able 
to do justice to his powers and attainments, to ap- 
preciate his services, to take the measure, if I may 
so say, of his colossal mental stature. Without 
going beyond this immediate neighborhood, and in 
no degree ungrateful for the liberality or insensible 
to the ability with which he has been eulogized in 
other parts of the country, what need be said, what 
can be said in the hearing of those who have lis- 
tened to Ilillard, to Chief Justice Parker, to Gush- 
ing, and to our lamented Choate, whose discourse 
on Mr. Webster at Dartmouth College appears to 
me as magnificent a eulogium as was ever pro- 
nounced ? 

What can be said that has not been better said 
before ; — what need be said now that seven added 
years in the political progress of the country, seven 
years of respectful and affectionate recollection on 
the part of those who now occupy the stage, have 
confirmed his title to the large place, which, while 



15 



he lived, he filled m the public mind? AVliile he 
yet bore a part in the councils of the Union, he 
shared the fate which, in all countries, and espe- 
cially in all free countries, awaits commanding 
talent and eminent position: — which no great man 
in our history, — not Washington himself, — has ever 
escaped ; which none can escajDC, but those who 
are too feeble to provoke opposition, too obscure 
for jealousy. But now that he has rested for years 
in his honored grave, what generous nature is not 
pleased to strew flowers on the sod ? What hon- 
orable opponent, still faithful to principle, is not 
willing that all in which he differed from him 
should be referred, without bitterness, to the im- 
partial arbitrament of time ; and that all that he 
respected and loved should be cordiallj^ remem- 
bered ? What public man, especially who, with 
whatever differences of judgment of men or meas- 
ures, has borne on his own shoulders the heavv 
burden of responsibility, — who has felt how hard 
it is, in the larger complications of affairs, at all 
times, to meet the expectations of an intelligent 
and watchful, but impulsive and not always thor- 
oughly instructed public ; how difficidt sometimes 
to satisfy his own judgment, — is not willing that 
the noble qualities and patriotic services of Webster 
sliould be honorably recorded in the book of the 
country's remembrance, and his statue set up in 
the Pantheon of her illustrious sons ? 



V 



16 



POSTHUMOUS HONORS. 



These posthumous honors lovingly paid to de- 
parted worth are among the compensations, which 
a Idnd Providence vouchsafes, for the unavoidable 
conllicts of judgment and stern collisions of party, 
which make the political career always arduous, 
even when pursued with the greatest success, gen- 
erally precarious, sometimes destructive of health 
and even of life. It is impossible under free govern- 
ments to prevent the existence of party ; not less 
impossible that parties should be conducted with 
spirit and vigor, without more or less injustice done 
and suffered, more or less gross uncharitableness and 
bitter denunciation. Besides, with the utmost effort 
at impartiality, it is not within the competence of 
our frail capacities to do full justice at the time 
to a character of varied and towering greatness, 
engaged in an active and responsible political career. 
The truth of his principles, the wisdom of his coun- 
sels, the value of his services must be seen in their 
fruits, and the richest fruits are not those of the 
most rapid growth. The wisdom of antiquity pro- 
nounced that no one was to be deemed happy until 
after death; not merely because he was then first 
placed beyond the vicissitudes of human fortune, but 
because then onlv the rival interests, the discordant 
judgments, the hostile passions of contemporaries 



17 



are, in ordinary cases, no longer concerned to ques- 
tion his merits. Horace, with gross adulation, sang 
to his imperial master, Augustus, that he alone of 
the great of the earth ever received while living 
the full meed of praise. All the other great bene- 
factors of mankind, the inventors of arts, the de- 
stroyers of monsters, the civilizers of states, found 
by experience that hatred and envy were appeased 
by death alone.* 

That solemn event which terminates the material 
existence, becomes by the sober revisions of contempo- 
rary judgment, aided by offices of respectful and affec- 
tionate commemoration, the commencement of a nobler 
life on earth. The wakeful eyes are closed, the feverish 
pulse is still, the tired and trembling limbs are relieved 
from their labors, and the aching head is laid to rest on 
the lap of its mother earth ; but all that we honored 
and loved in the living man begins to live again in a 
new and hio-her beino- of influence and fame. It was 
given but to a limited number to listen to the living 
voice, and they can never listen to it again, but the 
wise teachings, the grave admonitions, the patriotic 
exhortations which fell from his tongue, will be gath- 
ered together and garnered up in the memory of 
millions. The cares, the toils, the sorrows; the con- 
flicts with others, the conflicts of the fervent spirit with 



* Comperit invidiam supremo fine domari. 
3 



18 



itself; the sad accidents of humanity, the fears of the 
brave, the folHes of the wise, the errors of the learned ; 
all that dashed the cup of enjoyment with bitter drops, 
and strewed sorrowful ashes over the beauty of expec- 
tation and promise ; the treacherous friend, the ungen- 
erous rival, the mean and malignant foe ; the unchari- 
table prejudice which withheld the just tribute of 
praise ; the human frailty which wove sharp thorns into 
the wreath of solid merit; — all these, in ordinary cases, 
are buried in the grave of the illustrious dead ; while 
their brilliant talents, their deeds of benevolence and 
public spirit, their wise and eloquent words, their 
heaUng counsels, their generous affections, the whole 
man, in short, whom we revered and loved, and would 
fain unitate, especially when his image is impressed 
upon our recollections by the pencil or the chisel, goes 
forth to the admiration of the latest posterity. Ex- 
tinetus aniahitur idem. 



THE OBSEQUIES OF MR. CHOATE. 

Our city has lately witnessed a most beautiful 
mstance of this reanimating power of death. A few 
weeks since, we followed towards the tomb the lifeless 
remains of our lamented Clioate. Well may we conse- 
crate a moment, even of this hour, to him who, in that 
admiiublu discourse to which I have already alluded, 
flirl sucli noblo jiistice to himself and the great subject 



19 



of his eulogy. A short time before the decease of our 
much honored friend, I had seen him shattered by 
disease, his all-persuasive voice faint and languid, his 
beaming eye quenched; and as he left us in search 
of health in a foreign clime, a painful unage and a 
sad foreboding, too soon fulfilled, dwelt upon my 
mind. But on the morning of the day when we 
were to pay the last mournful offices to our friend, 
the 23d of July, with a sad, let me not say a repining, 
thought, that so much talent, so much learning, so 
much eloquence, so much wit, so much wisdom, so 
much force of intellect, so much kindness of heart, 
were taken from us, an engraved likeness of him 
was brought to me, in which he seemed to Hve again. 
The shadows of disease and suffering had passed 
from the brow, the well-remembered countenance was 
clothed with its wonted serenity, a cheerful smile 
lighted up the features, genius kindled in the eye, 
persuasion hovered over the lips, and I felt as if I 
was going not to his funeral but his triumph. 
"Weep not for me," it seemed to say, "but weep 
for yourselves." And never, while he dwelt among 
us in the feeble tabernacle of the flesh ; never while 
the overtasked spirit seemed to exhaust the delicate 
frame in which it sojourned ; never as I had listened 
to the melody of his living voice, did he speak to 
my imagination and heart with such a touching 
though silent eloquence, as when we followed his 



20 



hearse along these streets, that bright midsummer's 
noon. u|) the via sacra in front of this capitol, slowly 
movmg to the solemn beat of grand dead marches, 
as they rose and swelled from wailing clarion and 
mullled drum, while the minute-guns from yonder 
lawn responded to the jDassing bell from yonder 
steeple. I then miderstood the sublime significance 
of the words which Cicero puts into the mouth of 
Cato, that the mind, elevated to the foresight of pos- 
terity, when departing from this life, begins at length 
to live ; yea, the sublimer words of a greater than 
Cicero, " death, where is thy sting ? grave, 
where is thy victory?" And then, as we passed the 
abodes of those whom he knew, and honored and 
loved, and who had gone before ; of Lawrence here 
on the left ; of Prescott yonder on the right ; this 
home where Hancock lived and Washington was 
received ; this where Lafayette sojourned ; this cap- 
ital, where his own political course began, and on 
which so many patriotic memories are concentrated, 
I felt, not as if we were conducting another frail and 
weary body to the tomb, but as if we were escorting 
a noble brother to the congenial companj' of the 
departed great and good ; and I was ready myself to 
exclaim, '•'• prwclarmn dicni, cum ad illud divimim ani- 
morum couciUiim ccdinnqiie profisciscar, ciimque ex hac iurha 
i't colluvione diaccdam." 



21 



THE PERIOD IN WHJCH MR. AVEBSTER LIVED. 

It will not, I think, be expected of me to under- 
take the superfluous task of narrating in great detail 
the well-known events of Mr. Webster's life, or of 
attempting an elaborate delineation of that character, 
to which such amjDle justice has already been done 
by master hands. I deem it sufficient to say in 
general, that, referred to all the standards by which 
public character can be estimated, he exhibited, in a 
rare degree, the qualities of a truly great man. 

The period at which he came forward in life, and 
during which he played so distinguished a part, was 
not one in which small men, dependent upon their 
own exertions, are likely to rise to a high place in 
public estimation. The present generation of young 
men are hardly aware of the vehemence of the 
storms that shook the world at the time, when Mr. 
Webster became old enough to form the first childish 
conceptions of the nature of the events in progress 
at home and abroad. His recollection, he tells us, 
in an autobiographical sketch, went back to the year 
1790, — a year when the poHtical system of conti- 
nental Europe was about to jDlunge into a state of 
frightful disintegration, while, under the new consti- 
tution, the United States were commencing an 
unexampled career of prosperity ; Washington just 
entering upon the first Presidency of the new-born 



22 



republic ; the reins of the oldest monarchy in Europe 
slipping, besmeared with blood, from the hands of 
the descendant of thirty generations of kings. The 
fearful struggle between France and the allied powers 
succeeded, which strained the resources of the Euro- 
pean governments to their utmost tension. Armies 
and navies were arrayed against each other, such as 
the civilized world had never seen before, and wars 
waged beyond all former experience. The storm 
passed over the continent as a tornado passes through 
a forest, when it comes rolling and roaring from the 
clouds, and prostrates the growth of centuries in its 
path. England, in virtue of her insular position, her 
naval power, and her free institutions, had, more than 
any other foreign country, weathered the storm ; but 
Russia saw the Arctic sky Hghted with the flames of 
her old Muscovite capital; the shadowy Kaisers of 
the House of Hapsburg were compelled to abdicate 
the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, and accept as 
a substitute that of Austria ; Prussia, staggering from 
Jena, trembled on the verge of political annihilation ; 
the other German States, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, 
and the Spanish Peninsula, were convulsed; Egypt 
overrun; Constantinople and the East threatened; 
and in many of these states, institutions, laws, ideas, 
and manners were changed as effectually as dynasties. 
With the downfall of Napoleon, a partial recon- 
struction of the old forms took place ; but the 



23 



political genius of the continent of Europe was 
revolutionized. 

On this side of the Atlantic, the United States, 
though studying an impartial neutrality, were drawn 
at first to some extent into the outer circles of the 
terrific maelstrom; but soon escaping, they started 
upon a career of national growth and development 
of which the world has witnessed no other example. 
Meantime, the Spanish and the Portuguese Vice- 
royalties south of us, from Mexico to Cape Horn, 
asserted their independence ; that Castillian empire 
on which the sun never set was dismembered, and 
the golden chain was forever sundered, by which 
Columbus had linked half his new-found world to the 
throne of Ferdinand and Isabella. 

Such was the crowd and the importance of the 
events in which, from his childhood up, the life of 
Mr. Webster, and of the generation to which he 
belonged, was passed; and I can with all sincerity 
say, that it has never been my fortune, in Europe or 
America, to hold intercourse with any person, who 
seemed to me to penetrate further than he had done 
into the spirit of the age, under its successive phases 
of dissolution, chaos, reconstruction, and progress. 
Born and bred on the verge of the w^ilderness, (his 
father a veteran of those old French and Indian wars, 
in which, in the middle of the eighteenth century, 
wild men came out of the woods, to wage war with 



24 



tlie tomahawk and the scalping knife, against the 
fireside and the cradle), with the slenderest opportu- 
nities for early education, entering life with scarce 
the usual facilities for reading the riddle of foreign 
statecraft, remote from the scene of action, relying 
upon sources of information equally open to all the 
world, he seemed to me, nevertheless, by the instinct 
of a great capacity, to have comprehended in all its 
aspects the march of events in Europe and this 
country. He surveyed the agitation of the age with 
calmness, deprecated its excesses, sympathized with 
its progressive tendencies, rejoiced in its triumphs. 
His first words in Congress, when he came unan- 
nounced from his native hills in 1813, proclaimed his 
mastery of the perplexed web of European politics, 
in which the United States were then but too deeply 
entangled ; and from that time till his death, I think 
we all felt, those who differed from him as well as 
those who agreed with him, that he was in no degree 
below the standard of his time ; that if Providence 
had cast his lot in the field where the great destinies 
of Europe are decided, this poor New Hampshire 
youth woidd have carried his head as high among 
the Metternichs, the Nesselrodes, the Hardenbergs, 
the Talleyrands, the Castlereaghs of the day, and 
surely among their successors, who now occupy 
tlie stage, as he did among his contemporaries at 
lioiue. 



25 



HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 



Let me not be thought, however, in this remark, 
to intimate that these contemporaries at home were 
second-rate men; flir otherwise. It has sometimes 
seemed to me that, owing to the natural reverence 
in which we hold the leaders of the revolutionary 
period, — the heroic age of the country, — and those 
of the constitutional age who brought out of chaos 
this august system of confederate republicanism, we 
hardly do full justice to the third period in our polit- 
ical history, which may be dated from about the 
time when Mr. Webster came into political life, and 
continued through the first part of his career. The 
heroes and sages of the revolutionary and constitu- 
tional period, were indeed gone. Washington, Frank- 
lin, Greene, Hamilton, Morris, Jay, slept in their 
honored graves. John Adams, Jefferson, Carroll, 
though surviving, were withdrawn from affairs. But 
Madison, who contributed so much to the formation 
and adoption of the constitution, was at the helm ; 
Monroe in the cabinet ; John Quincy Adams, Gallatin 
and Bayard negotiating in Europe; in the Senate 
were Rufus King, Christopher Gore, Jeremiah Mason, 
Giles, Otis ; in the House of Representatives, Pick- 
ering, Clay, Lowndes, Cheves, Calhoun, Gaston, For- 
syth, Randolph, Oakley, Pitkin, Grosvenor; on the 
bench of the Supreme Court, Marshall, Livingston, 



26 



Story; at the bar, Dexter, Emmet, Pinkney, and 
Wirt; Avitli many distinguished men not in the gen- 
eral government, of whom it is enough to name 
DeWitt Chnton and Chancellor Kent. It was my 
privilege to see Mr. Webster associated and mingling 
with nearly all these eminent men, and their suc- 
cessors, not only in later years, but in my own 
youth, and when he first came forward, unknown as 
yet to the country at large, scarcely known to himself, 
not arrogant, nor yet wholly unconscious of his mighty 
powers, tied to a laborious profession in a narrow 
range of practice, but glowing with a generous 
ambition, and not afraid to grapple with the strongest 
and boldest in the land. The opinion pronounced 
of him, at the commencement of his career, by Mr. 
Lowndes, that the "South had not in Congress his 
superior, nor the North his equal," savors in the 
form of expression of sectional partiality. If it had 
been said, that neither at the South or the 
North had any public man risen more rapidly to a 
brilliant reputation, no one, I think, would have 
denied the justice of the remark. He stood from 
the first the acknowledged equal of the most distin- 
guished ol' his associates. In later years he acted 
with the, successors of those I have named, with 
Benton, Burges, Edward Livingston, Hayne, McDuffie, 
McLean, Sergeant, Clayton, Wilde, Storrs, our own 
Bates, Davis, Gorham, Choate, and others who still 



27 



survive; but it will readily be admitted that he 
never sunk from the position which he assumed at 
the outset of his career, nor stood second to any 
man in any part of the country, 

THE QUESTIONS DISCUSSED IN HIS TIME. 

If we now look for a moment at the public ques- 
tions with which he was called to deal in the course 
of his career, and with which he did deal, in the most 
masterly manner, as they successively came up, we 
shall find new proofs of his great ability. When he 
first came forward in life, the two great belligerent 
powers of Europe, contending with each other for 
the mastery of the world, despising our youthful 
weakness, and impatient of our gainful neutrality, 
in violation now admitted of the Law of Nations, 
emulated each other in the war waged upon our 
commerce and the insults offered to our flag. To 
engage in a contest with Voth, would have been 
madness; the choice of the antagonist was a question 
of difficulty, and well calculated to furnish topics of 
reproach and recrimination. Whichever side you 
adopted, your opponent regarded you as being, in a 
great national struggle, the apologist of an unfriendly 
foreign power. In 1798 the United States chose 
France for their enemy; in 1812, Great Britain. 
War was declared against the latter country on the 



28 



18th of June, 1812; — the orders in Council, which 
were the immediate, though not the exclusive, cause 
of the war, were rescinded five days afterwards. 
Such are the narrow chances on which the fortunes 
of States depend. 

Great questions of domestic and foreign policy 
followed the close of war. Of the former class were 
the restoration of a currency which should truly 
represent the values which it nominally circulated ; 
a result mainly brought about by a resolution moved 
by Mr. Webster; — the fiscal system of the Union 
and the best mode of connecting the collection, 
safe-keeping, and disbursement of the public funds, 
with the commercial wants, and especially with the 
exchanges of the country; — the stability of the 
manufactures, w^hicli had been called into existence 
during the war; what can constitutionally be done, 
ought anything as a matter of policy to be done by 
Congress, to protect them from the competition of 
foreign skill, and the glut of foreign markets ; the 
internal communications of the Union, a question of 
paramount interest before the introduction of rail- 
roads; — can the central power do anything, what 
can it do, by roads and canals, to bind the distant 
parts of the continent together; the enlargement of 
the judicial system of the country to meet the wants 
of the greatly increased number of the States ; the 
revision of the criminal code of the United States, 



29 



which was almost exclusively his work ; the admin- 
istration of the public lands, and the best mode of 
filling with civilized and Christian homes this immense 
domain, the amplest heritage which was ever sub- 
jected to the control of a free government ; connected 
with the public domain, the relations of the civilized 
and dominant race to the aboriginal children of the 
soil ; and lastly, the constitutional questions on the 
nature of the government, which were raised in that 
gigantic controversy on the interpretation of the 
fundamental law itself These were some of the most 
important domestic questions which occupied the 
attention of Congress and the country, while Mr. 
Webster was on the stage. 

Of questions connected with foreign affairs, were 
those growing out of the war, which was in progress 
when he first became a member of Congress, — then 
the various questions of International Law, some of 
them as novel as they were important, which had 
reference to the entrance or the attempted entrance 
of so many new States into the family of nations; in 
Europe, — Greece, Belgium, Hungary; — on this con- 
tinent, twelve or fourteen new repubhcs, great and 
small, bursting from the ruins of the Spanish colonial 
empire, like a group of asteroids from the wreck of 
an exploded planet ; — the invitation of the infjint 
American Republics to meet them in Congress at 
Panama; — our commercial relations with the British 



30 



Colonies in the West Indies and on this continent; 
— demands on several European States for spoliations 
on our commerce during the wars of the French 
Revolution ; — our secular controversy with England 
relative to the boundary of the United States on the 
north-eastern and Pacific frontiers ; — our relations 
with Mexico, previous to the war; the immunity of 
the American flag upon the common jurisdiction of 
the ocean ; — and more important than all other 
questions, foreign or domestic, in its influence npon 
the general politics of the country, the great sectional 
controversy, — not then first commenced, but greatly 
increased in warmth and energy, — which connected 
itself with the organization of the newly acquired 
Mexican territories. 

Such were the chief questions on which it was Mr. 
Webster's duty to form opinions; as an influential 
member of Congress and a political leader, to speak 
and to vote ; as a member of the Executive govern- 
ment, to exercise a powerful, over some of them, a 
decisive control. Besides these, there was another 
class of questions of great public importance, which 
came up for adjudication in the Courts of the 
United States, which he was called professionally 
to discuss. Many of the questions of each class now 
referred to, divided, and still divide opinion ; excited, 
and still excite the feelings of individuals, of parties, 
of sections of the country. There are some of them. 



31 



which in the course of a long life, under changing 
circumstances, are likely to be differently viewed at 
different periods, by the same individual. I am not 
here to-day to rake off the warm ashes from the 
embers of controversies, which have spent their fury 
and are dying away, or to fan the fires of those 
which still burn. But no one, I think, whether he 
agreed with Mr. Webster or differed from him, as 
to any of these questions, will deny that he treated 
them each and all as they came up in the Senate, 
in the Courts, or in negotiation with foreign powers, 
in a broad, statesman-like, and masterly way. There 
are few who would not confess, when they agreed 
with him, that he had expressed their opinions better 
than they could do it themselves ; few, when they 
differed from him, who would not admit that he 
had maintained his own views manfully, powerfully, 
and liberally. 

HIS CAREER AS A STATESMAN, 

Such was the period in which Mr. Webster lived, 
such were the associates with whom he acted, 
the questions with which he had to deal as a states- 
man, a jurist, the head of an administration of the 
government, and a public speaker. Let us contem- 
plate him for a moment in either capacity. 

Without passing through the preliminary stage 



32 



of the State Legislature, and elected to Congress 
in six years from the time of his admission to the 
Superior Court of New Hampshire, he was on his 
first entrance into the House of Representatives, 
placed by Mr. Speaker Clay on the Committee of 
Foreio-n Affairs, and took rank forthwith as one of 
the leading statesmen of the day. His first speech 
had reference to those famous Berlin and Milan 
decrees and Orders in Council, to which I have 
already alluded, and the impression produced by 
it was such as to lead the venerable Chief Justice 
Marshall, eighteen years afterwards, in writing to 
Mr. Justice Story, to say, "At the time when this 
speech was delivered, I did not know Mr. Webster, 
but I was so much struck with it, that I did not 
hesitate then to state that he was a very able man, 
and would become one of the very first statesmen 
in America, — perhaps the very first." His mind at 
the very outset of his career, had, by a kind of 
instinct, soared from the principles which govern the 
municipal relations of individuals, to those great 
rules which dictate the law of nations to indepen- 
dent States. He tells us, in the fragment of a 
diary kept while he was a law student in Mr. 
Gore's office, that he then read Vattel through for 
the third time. Accordingly, in after life, there 
was no subject which he discussed with greater 
pleasure, and I may add, with greater power, than 



33 



questions of the Law of Nations. The Revolution 
of Greece had from its outbreak, attracted much 
of the attention of the civilized world. A people, 
whose ancestors had originally tanght letters and 
arts to mankind, struggling to regain a place in 
the great family of independent States; the con- 
vulsive efforts of a Christian people, the foundation 
of whose churches by the apostles in person, is 
recorded in the New Testament, to shake off the 
yoke of Mohammedan despotism, possessed a strange 
interest for the friends of Christian Liberty through- 
out Europe and America. President Monroe had 
called the attention of Congress to this most 
interesting struggle, in December, 1823, and Mr. 
Webster, returning to Congress after a retirement 
of eight years, as the Representative of Boston, 
made the Greek Revolution the subject of a motion 
and a speech. In this speech he treated what he 
called "the great question of the day, — the ques- 
tion between absolute and regulated governments." 
He engaged in a searching criticism of the doctrines 
of the " Holy Alliance," and maintained the duty 
of the United States as a great free power to 
protest against them. That speech remains, in my 
judgment, to this day the ablest and most effective 
remonstrance against the principles of the allied 
military powers of continental Europe. Mr. Jere- 
miah Mason pronounced it " the best sample of 



34 



})arliamentary eloquence and statesmanlike reasoning 
which our country had seen." His indignant pro- 
test against the spirit of absolutism, and his words 
of sympathy with an infant people struggling for 
independence, were borne on the wings of the wind 
throughout Christendom. They were read in every 
language, at every court, in every cabinet, in every 
reading room, on every market place ; by the repub- 
licans of Mexico and Spanish South America, by 
the patriots of Italy and of Poland; on the Tagus, 
on the Danube, as well as at the head of the 
little armies of revolutionary Greece. The practical 
impression which it made on the American mind 
was seen in the liberality with which cargoes of food 
and clothing, a year or two afterwards, were des- 
patched to the relief of the Greeks. No legislative 
or executive measure was adopted at that time in 
consequence of Mr. Webster's motion and speech, — 
probably none was anticipated by him; but no one 
who considers how much the march of events in 
such cases is inlhienced by the moral sentiments, 
will doul)t that a great word like this, spoken in 
the American Congress, must have had no slight 
effect in cheering the heart of Greece, to persevere 
in her unequal l)ut finally successful struggle. 

It was by these masterly parliamentary efforts that 
Mr. Webster left his mark on the age in which he 
lived. His fidelity to his convictions kept him for 



35 



the greater part of his hfe in a minority — a position 
which he regarded not as a proscription, but as a 
post of honor and duty. He felt that in free gov- 
ernments and in a normal state of parties, an oppo- 
sition is a political necessity, and that it has its 
duties not less responsible than those which attach 
to office. Before the importance of Mr. Webster's 
political services is disparaged for want of positive 
results, which can only be brought about by those 
who are clothed with power, it must be shown that 
to raise a persuasive and convincing voice in the 
vindication of truth and right, to uphold and assert 
the true principles of the government under which 
we hve, and bring them home to the hearts of the 
people, to do this from a sense of patriotic duty, 
and without hope of the honors and emoluments of 
office, to do it so as to instruct the public con- 
science and warm the public heart, is a less merit- 
orious service to society, than to touch with skilful 
hand the springs of party politics, and to hold 
together the often discordant elements of ill-com- 
pacted majorities. 

The greatest parliamentary effi^rt made by Mr. 
Webster, was his second speech on Foote's resolu- 
tion, — the question at issue being nothing less than 
this : Is the Constitution of the United States a 
compact without a common umpire between con- 
federated sovereignties; or is it a government of 



36 



ihe people of the United States, sovereign within 
the sphere of its delegated powers, although reserv- 
ing a great mass of undelegated rights to the separate 
State governments and the people ? With those who 
embrace the opinions which Mr. Webster combated 
in this speech, this is not the time nor the place 
to engage in an argument ; but those who believe 
that he maintained the true principles of the Con- 
stitution, will probably agree, that since that instru- 
ment was communicated to the Continental Congress, 
seventy-two years ago this day, by George Washing- 
ton as President of the Federal Convention, no 
greater service has been rendered to the country 
than in the delivery of this speech. Well do I 
recollect the occasion and the scene. It was truly 
what Wellington called the battle of Waterloo, a 
contlict of giants. I passed an hour and a half with 
Mr. Webster, at his request, the evening before this 
great efibrt; and he went over to me, from a very 
concise brief, the main topics of the speech which 
he had prepared for the following day. So calm 
and unimpassioned was the memorandum, so entirely 
was he at ease himself, that I was tempted to think, 
absurdly enough, that he was not sufficiently aware 
uf the magnitude of the occasion. But T soon per- 
ceived that his calmness was the repose of conscious 
j)ower. He was not only at ease, but sportive and 
liill of anecdote; and as he told the Senate play- 



37 



fully the next day, he slept soundly that night on 
the formidable assault of his gallant and accom- 
plished adversary. So the great Conde slept on 
the eye of the battle of Rocroi; so Alexander slept 
on the eve of the battle of Arbela ; and so they 
awoke to deeds of immortal fame. As I saw him 
in the evening, (if I may borrow an illustration 
from his favorite amusement,) he was as uncon- 
cerned and as free of spirit, as some here have often 
seen him, while floating in his fishing boat along a 
hazy shore, gently rocking on the tranquil tide, 
dropping his line here and there, with the varying 
fortune of the sport. The next morning he was 
like some mighty Admiral, dark and terrible, casting 
the lono; shadow of his frownino; tiers far over the 
sea, that seemed to sink beneath him ; his broad 
pendant streaming at the main, the stars and the 
stripes at the fore, the mizzen, and the peak ; and 
bearing down like a tempest upon his antagonist, 
with all his canvas strained to the wind, and all 
his thunders roaring from his broadsides. 

AS A JURIST. 

Mr. Webster's career was not less brilliant as a 
jurist than as a statesman. In fact, he possessed in 
an eminent degree, a judicial mind. While performing 
an amount of congressional and official labor suf- 






ficient to fill the busiest day, and to task the strong- 
est powers, he yet sustained with a giant's strength, 
the Herculean toils of his profession. At the very 
commencement of his legal studies, resisting the 
fascination of a more liberal course of reading, he 
laid his foundations deep in the common law; grap- 
pled as well as he might with the weary subtleties 
and obsolete technicalities of Coke Littleton, and 
abstracted and translated volumes of reports from 
the Norman French and Latin. A few years of 
practice follow in the courts of New Hampshire, 
interrupted by his service in Congress for two polit- 
ical terms, and we find him at the bar of the Supreme 
Court of the United States at Washington, inaugu- 
rating in the Dartmouth College case, what may 
be called a new school of constitutional jurisprudence. 
It would be a waste of time to speak of that 
great case, or of Mr. Webster's connection with it. 
It is too freshly remembered in our tribunals. So 
novel at that time, were the principles involved in 
it, that a member of the Court, after a cursory 
inspection of the record in the case, expressed the 
opinion that little of importance could be urged in 
behalf of the plaintiff in error ; but so firm is the 
basis on Avliich, in that and subsequent cases of 
a similar character, those principles were established, 
that they form one of the best settled, as they are 



39 



one of the most important, portions of the consti- 
tutional law of the Union. 

Not less important, and, at the time, not less 
novel, were the principles involved in the celebrated 
case of Gibbons and Ogden. This case grew out 
of a grant by the State of New York to the 
assignees of Fulton, of the exclusive right to navi- 
gate by steam the rivers, harbors and bays of the 
Empire State. Twenty-five years afterwards, Mr. 
Justice Wayne gave to Mr. Webster the credit of 
having laid down the broad constitutional ground, 
on which the navigable waters of the United States, 
" every creek and river and lake and bay and 
harbor in the country," were forever rescued from 
the grasp of State monopoly. So failed the inten- 
tion of the Legislature of New York to secure a 
rich pecuniary reward to the great perfecter of 
steam navigation; so must have failed any attempt 
to compensate by money the inestimable achieve- 
ment. Monopolies could not reward it; silver and 
gold could not weigh down its value. Small services 
are paid with money and place; large ones with fame. 
Fulton had his reward, when, after twenty years 
of unsuccessful experiment and hope deferred, he 
made the passage to Albany by steam ; as Frank- 
lin had his reward when he saw the fibres of the 
cord which held his kite stiffening with the elec- 
tricity they had drawn from the thunder-cloud; 



40 



as Galileo had his when he pointed his little tube 
to the heavens and discovered the Medicean stars; 
as Columbus had his when he beheld from the deck 
of his vessel a moving light on the shores of his 
new found world. That one glowing unutterable 
thrill of conscious success is too exquisite to be 
alloyed with baser metal. The midnight vigils, the 
aching eyes, the fiiinting hopes turned at last into 
one bewildering ecstasy of triumph, cannot be repaid 
with gold. The great discoveries, improvements and 
inventions which benefit mankind, can only be 
rewarded by opposition, obloquy, poverty, and an 
undying name. 

Time would fail me, were I otherwise equal to 
the task, to dwell on the other great constitutional 
cases argued by Mr. Webster ; those on State 
insolvent laws, the Bank of the United States, 
the Sailor's Snug Harbor, the Charlestown Bridge 
Franchise, or those other great cases on the va- 
lidity of Mr. Girard's will, in which Mr. Webster's 
argument drew forth an emphatic acknowledgment 
from the citizens of Washington, of all denomina- 
tions, for its great value " in demonstrating the vital 
importance of Christianity to the success of our free 
institutions, and that the general diffusion of that 
argument among the people of the United States 
is a matter of deep public interest;" or the argu- 
ment of the Bhode Island charter case in 1848, 



41 



which attracted no little public notice in Europe 
at that anxious period, as a masterly discussion of 
the true principles of constitutional obligation. 

It would be superfluous, I might almost say im- 
pertinent, to remark, that if Mr. Webster stood at 
the head of the constitutional lawyers of the coun- 
try, he was not less distinguished in early and middle 
life, in the ordinary walks of the profession. From 
a very early period he shared the best practice with 
the most eminent of his profession. The trial of 
Goodridge in 1817, and of Knapp in 1829, are still 
recollected as specimens of the highest professional 
skill; the latter, in fact, as a case of historical im- 
portance in the criminal jurisprudence of the country. 

But, however distinguished his reputation in the 
other departments of his profession, his fame as a 
jurist is mainly associated with the tribunals of the 
United States. The relation of the Federal Govern- 
ment to that of the States is peculiar to this country, 
and gives rise to a class of cases in the Supreme 
Court of the United States, to which there is noth- 
ing analogous in the jurisprudence of England. In 
that country nothing, not even the express words 
of a treaty, can be pleaded against an act of Par- 
liament. The Supreme Court of the United States 
entertains questions which involve the constitutionality 
of the laws of State legislatures, the validity of the 
decrees of State courts, nay of the constitutionality 



42 



of acts of Congress itself Every one feels that 
this range and elevation of jurisdiction must tend 
greatly to the respectability of practice at that 
forum, and give a breadth and liberality to the 
tone with which questions are there discussed, not 
so much to be looked for in the ordinary litigation 
of the common law. No one needs to be reminded 
how fully Mr. Webster felt, and in his own relations 
to it, sustained the dignity of this tribunal. He 
regarded it as the great mediating power of the 
Constitution. He believed that while it commanded 
the confidence of the country, no serious derange- 
ment of any of the other great functions of the 
government was to be apprehended; if it should 
ever fail to do so, he feared the worst. For the 
memory of Marshall, the great and honored magis- 
trate who presided in this court for the third part 
of a century, and did so much to raise its rejDuta- 
tion and establish its influence, he cherished feelings 
of veneration second only to those which he bore 
to the memory of Washington. 

AS A DIPLOMATIST. 

In his political career Mr. Webster owed almost 
everything to popular choice, or the favor of the 
Legislature of Massachusetts. He was, however, twice 
clothed with executive power, as the head of an 



43 



Administration, and in that capacity achieved a diplo- 
matic success of the highest order. Among the 
victories of peace not less renowned than those of 
war which Milton celebrates, the first place is surely 
due to those friendly arrangements between great 
powers, by which war is averted. Such an arrange- 
ment was effected by Mr. Webster in 1842, in 
reference to more than one highly irritating question 
between this country and Great Britain, and especially 
the North-eastern Boundary of the United States. 
I allude to the subject, not for the sake of reopen- 
ing obsolete controversies, but for the purpose of 
vindicating his memory from the charges of disin- 
genuousness and even fraud which were brought 
against him at the time in England, and which 
have very lately been revived in that countr}'-. I 
do it the rather as the facts of the case have never 
been fully stated. 

The North-eastern Boundary of the United States, 
which was described by the treaty of 1783, had 
never been surveyed and run. It was still unsettled 
in 1842, and had become the subject of a contro- 
versy which had resisted the ability of several suc- 
cessive administrations, on both sides of the water, 
and had nearly exhausted the resources of arbitration 
and diplomacy. Border collisions, though happily no 
bloodshed, had taken place ; seventeen regiments had 
been thrown into the British Provinces; General 



44 



Scott had been despatched to the frontier of Maine; 
and our Minister in London (Mr. Stevenson,) had 
written to the commander of the American squadron 
in the Mediterranean, that a war, in his opinion, was 
inevitable. 

Such was the state of things when Mr. Webster 
came into the Department of State in the spring 
of 1841. He immediately gave an intimation to the 
British government that he was desirous of renew- 
ing the interrupted negotiation. A change of min- 
istry took place in England, in the course of a few 
months, and a resolution was soon taken by Sir 
Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen, to send a special 
Envoy to the United States, to make a last attempt 
to settle this dangerous dispute by negotiation. 
Lord Ashburton was selected for this honorable 
errand, and his known friendly relations with Mr. 
Webster were among the motives that prompted 
his appointment. It may be observed that the in- 
trinsic dilTiculties of the negotiation were increased 
by the circumstance, that, as the disputed territory 
lay in the State of Maine, and the property of the 
soil was in Maine and Massachusetts, it was deemed 
necessary to obtain the consent of those States to 
any arrangement that might be entered into by 
the general government. 

The length of time for which the question had 
l)een controverted had, as usually happens in such 



45 



cases, had the effect of fixing both parties more 
firmly in their oj^posite views of the subject. It 
was a pledge at least of the good faith with which 
the United States had conducted the discussion, that 
everything in our archives bearing on the subject 
had been voluntarily spread before the world. On 
the other side, no part of the correspondence of 
the ministers who negotiated the treaty of 1783 had 
ever been published, and whenever Americans were 
permitted for literary purposes to institute historical 
inquiries in the public offices in London, precautions 
were taken to prevent anything from being brought 
to light, which might bear unfavorably on the Brit- 
ish interpretation of the treaty. 

The American interpretation of the treaty had 
been maintained in its fullest extent, as far as I 
am aware, by every statesman in the country, of 
whatever party, to whom the question had ever 
been submitted. It had been thus maintained in 
good faith by an entire generation of public men 
of the highest intelligence and most unquestioned 
probity. The British government had, with equal 
confidence, maintained their interpretation. The at- 
tempt to settle the controversy by a reference to 
the King of the Netherlands had failed. In this 
state of things, as the boundary had remained un- 
settled for fifty-nine years, and had been controverted 
for more than twenty; as negotiation and arbitra- 



46 



tion had shown that neither i3arty was hkely to 
convince the other; and as in cases of this kind 
it is more important that a piibUc controversy 
should be settled than how it should be settled, (of 
course within reasonable limits,) Mr. Webster had 
from the first contemplated a conventional line. 
Such a line, and for the same reasons, was antici- 
pated in Lord Ashburton's instructions, and was 
accordingly agreed upon by the two negotiators; — 
a line convenient and advantageous to both parties. 

Such an adjustment, however, like that which had 
been proposed by the King of the Netherlands, was 
extremely distasteful to the people of Maine, who, 
standing on their rights, adhered with the greatest 
tenacity to the boundary described by the treaty of 
1783, as the United States had always claimed it. 
As the opposition of Maine had prevented that ar- 
rangement from taking effect, there is great reason 
to suppose that it would have prevented the adoption 
of the conventional line agreed to by Mr. Webster 
and Lord Ashburton, but for the following circum- 
stance. 

This was the discovery, the year before, by Pres- 
ident Sparks, in the archives of the Bureau of 
Foreign Affairs, at Paris, of a copy of a small map 
of North America, by D'Anville, published in 1746, 
on which a red line was drawn, indicating a boun- 
dary between the United States and Great Britain 



47 



more favorable to the latter than she herself had 
claimed it. By whom it was marked, or for what 
purpose, did not appear, from any indication on 
the map itself There was also found, in the 
Bureau of Foreign Affairs, in a bound volume of 
official correspondence, a letter from Dr. Franklin 
to the Count de Vergennes, dated on the 6th of De- 
cember, 1782, (six days after the signature of the 
provisional articles,) stating that in compliance with 
the Count's request, and on a map sent him for 
the purpose, he had marked, " with a strong red 
line, the limits of the United States, as settled in 
the preliminaries." 

The French archives had been searched by Mr. 
Canning's agents as long ago as 1827, but this 
map either escaped their notice, or had not been 
deemed by them of importance. The English and 
French maps of this region differ from each other, 
and it is known that the map used by the nego- 
tiators of the treaty of 1783, was Mitchell's large 
map of America, published under the official sanc- 
tion of the Board of Trade in 1754. D'Anville's 
map was but eighteen inches square ; and on so 
small a scale the difference of the two boundaries 
would be but slight, and consequently open to 
mistake. The letter of the Count de Vergennes, 
transmitting a map to be marked, is not preserved, 
nor is there any endorsement on the red-line map, 



48 



to show that it is the map sent by the Count and 
marked by FrankHn. D'Anville's map was pub- 
lished in 1746, and it would surely be unwarrant- 
able to take for granted, in a case of such importance, 
that, in the course of thirty years, it could not have 
been marked with a red line, for some other pur- 
pose, and by some other person. It would be equally 
rash to assume as certain, either that the map 
marked by Franklin for the Count de Vergennes w^as 
deposited by him in the public archives ; or, that 
if so deposited, it may not be concealed among 
the sixty thousand maps contained in that deposi- 
tory. The official correspondence of Mr. Oswald, 
the British negotiator, was retained by the British 
minister in his own possession, and does not ap- 
pear ever to have gone into the public archives. 

In the absence of all evidence to connect Dr. 
Franklin's letter with the map, it could not, in a 
court of justice, have been received for a moment 
as a map marked by him ; and any presumption 
that it was so marked was resisted by the lan- 
guage of the treaty. This point was urged in 
debate, with great force, by Lord Brougham, who, as 
well as Sir Robert Peel, liberally defended Mr. 
Webster from the charges, which the opposition 
journals in London had brought against him. 

Information of this map was, in the progress of 
the negotiation, very properly communicated to Mr. 



49 



Webster by Mr. Sparks. For the reasons stated, it 
could not be admitted as proving anything. It was 
another piece of evidence of uncertain character, 
and Mr. Webster could have no assurance that 
the next day might not produce some other map 
equally strong or stronger on the American side ; 
which, as I shall presently state, was soon done in 
London. 

In this state of things, he made the onl}^ use of 
it, which could be legitimately^ made, in communi- 
cating it to the commissioners of the State of 
Maine and Massachusetts, and to the Senate, as a 
piece of conflicting evidence, entitled to considera- 
tion, likely to be urged as of great importance 
by the opposite party, if the discussion should be 
renewed, increasing the difficulties which already 
surrounded the question, and thus furnishing new 
grounds for agreeing to the proposed conventional 
line. No one, I think, acquainted with the history 
of the controversy, and the state of public opinion 
and feeling, can doubt that, but for this communi- 
cation, it would have been difficult, if not impos- 
sible, to procure the assent either of Maine or of 
the Senate to the treaty. 

This would seem to be going as far as reason 
or honor required, in reference to an unauthenti- 
cated document, having none of the properties of 
legal evidence, not exhibited by the opposite party, 



50 



and of a nature to be outweighed by contradictory 
evidence of the same kind, which was very soon 
done. But Mr. Webster was at the time, severely 
censured by the opposition press in England, and 
was accused of "perfidy and want of good faith," 
(and this charge has lately been revived in an 
elaborate and circumstantial manner), for not going 
with this map to Lord Ashburton ; entirely aban- 
doning the American claim, and ceding the whole 
of ihe disputed territory, more even than she asked, 
to Great Britain, on the strength of this single 
piece of doubtful evidence. 

Such a charge scarcely deserves an answer ; but 
two things will occur to all impartial persons, — 
one, that the red-line map, even had it been 
proved to have been marked by Franklin (which 
it is not), would be but one piece of evidence, 
to be weighed, with the words of the treaty, with 
all the other evidence in the case, and especially 
with the other maps; and, secondly, that such a 
course, as it is pretended that Mr. Webster ought 
to have pursued, could only l)e reasonably required 
of him, on condition that the British government 
had also produced, or would undertake to pro- 
duce, all the evidence, and especially all the 
maps in its possession, favorable to the American 
claim. 

Now, not to urge against the red-line map, that. 



51 



as was vigorously argued by Lord Brougham, it 
was at variance with the express words of the 
treaty, there were, according to Mr. Gallatin, the 
commissioner for preparing the claim of the United 
States, to be submitted to the arbiter in 1827, at 
least twelve maps, published in London, in the 
course of two years after the signature of the 
provisional articles in 1782, all of which give the 
boundary line precisely as claimed by the United 
States ; and no map was published in London, fa- 
voring the British claim, till the third year. The 
earliest of these maps were prepared to illustrate 
the debates in Parliament on the treaty ; or to 
illustrate the treaty in anticipation of the debate. 
None of the speakers on either side intimated that 
these maps are inaccurate, though some of the op- 
position speakers attacked the treaty as giving a 
disadvantageous boundary. One of these maps, that 
of Faden, the royal geographer, was stated on the 
face of it to be " drawn according to the treaty." Mr. 
Sparks is of opinion that Mr. Oswald, the British 
envoy by whom the treaty was negotiated, and 
who was in London when the earliest of the maps 
were engraved, was consulted by the map-makers 
on the subject of the boundary. At any rate, had 
they been inaccurate in this respect, either Mr. 
Oswald, or the minister, " who was vehemently as- 
sailed on account of the large concession of the 



52 

boundaries," would have exposed the error. But 
neither by Mr. Oswald nor by any of the minis- 
ters was any complaint made of the inaccuracy of 
the maps. 

One of these maps was that contained in "Bew's 
Political Magazine," a respectable journal, for which 
it was prepared, to illustrate the debate on the 
provisional articles of 1782. It happened that Lord 
Ashburton was calling upon me, about the time 
of the debate in the House of Commons on the 
merits of the treaty, on the 21st of March, 1843. 
On my expressing to him the opinion, with the 
freedom warranted by our intimate friendly rela- 
tions, that his government ought to be much 
obliged to him, for obtaining so much of a terri- 
tory, of which I conscientiously believed the whole 
belonged to us, "What," asked he, "have you to 
oppose to the red-line map?" I replied that, in 
addition to the other objections already mentioned, 
T considered it to be outweighed by the numerous 
other maps which were published at London at 
the time, some of them to illustrate the treaty ; 
and, among them, I added, " the map in the vol- 
ume which happens to lie on my table at this 
moment," which was the volume of " Bew's Po- 
litical Magazine," to which I called his attention. He 
told me that he was unacquainted with that map, 
and desired that 1 would lend him the volume, to 
show to Sir Robert Peel. This T did, and in his 



53 



reply to Lord Palmerston, in the House of Com- 
mons, Sir Robert Peel, holding this volume of mine 
in his hand, referred to the map contained in it, 
and " which follows," said he, " exactly the Ameri- 
can line," as an offset to the red-line map, of which 
great use had been made by the opposition in Eng- 
land, for the purpose of showing that Lord Ash- 
burton had been overreached by Mr. Webster. In 
the course of his speech, he defended Mr. Webster 
in the handsomest manner, from the charo;es brous'ht 
against him in reference to this map, by the oppo- 
sition press, and said that in his judgment "the 
reflections cast upon that most worthy and honor- 
able man are unjust." 

Nor was this all. The more effectually to remove 
the impression attempted to be raised, in consequence 
of the red-line map, that Lord Ashburton had been 
overreached, Sir Robert Peel stated, — and the disclosure 
ivas noil) for the first time made, — that there was, in the 
library of King George the Third, (which had been 
given to the British Museum by George the Fourth), 
a copy of Mitchell's map, in which the boundary as 
delineated "follows exactly the line claimed by the 
United States." On four places upon this line are 
written the words, in a strong, bold hand, "The 
boundary as described by Mr. Oswald." There is 
documentary proof that Mr. Oswald sent the map 
used by him in negotiating the treaty to King- 
George the Third, for his information ; and Lord 



54 



Brougham stated in his jDlace, in the House of Peers, 
that the words, four times repeated in different 
parts of the hne, were, in his opinion, written by 
the king himself! Having Ustened, and of course 
with the deepest interest, to the debate in the House 
of Connnons, I sought the earUest opportunity of 
inspecting the map, which was readily granted to 
me by Lord Aberdeen. The boundary is marked, in 
the most distinct and skilful manner, from the St. 
Croix all round to the St. Mary's, and is precisely 
that which has been always claimed by us. There is 
every reason to believe that this is the identical 
copy of Mitchell's map officially used by the nego- 
tiators, and sent by Mr. Oswald, as we learn from 
Dr. Franklin, to England. Sir Robert Peel informed 
me that it was unknown to him till after the treaty ; 
and Lord Aberdeen and Lord Ashburton gave me 
the same assurance. It was well known, however, 
to the agent employed under Lord Melbourne's 
administration in maintaining the British claim, and 
who was foremost in vilifying Mr. Webster for con- 
cealing the red-line map ! 



* 



* Sir Robert Peel, with reference to the line on Oswald's map, observes, 
" I do not say that that was the boundary, ultimately settled by the nego- 
tiators." Such, however, is certainly the case. Mr. Jay's copy of Mitchell's 
map (which was also discovered after the negotiation of the treaty), 
exhibits a line running down the St. John's to its mouth, and called " Mr. 
Oswald's line." This is the line which Mr. Oswald offered to the American 
negotiators on the 8th of October. It was, however, not approved by the 
Brkisli Government, and the line indicated in the map of King George the 
Third, as the "Boundary as described by Mr. Oswald," was finally 
agreed to. 



55 



AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER. 

I had intended to say a few words on Mr. Web- 
ster's transcendent ability as a public speaker on 
the great national anniversaries, and the patriotic 
celebrations of the country. But it would be impos- 
sible, within the limits of a few paragraphs, to do 
any kind of justice to such efforts as the discourse 
on the twenty-second December, at Plymouth ; the 
speeches on the laying the corner-stone, and the 
completion of the Bunker Hill Monument ; the 
eulogy on Adams and Jefferson ; the character of 
Washington ; the discourse on laying the foun- 
dation of the extension of the Capitol. What 
gravity and significance in the topics, what rich- 
ness of illustration, what soundness of principle, 
what elevation of sentiment, what fervor in the 
patriotic appeals, what purity, vigor, and clearness 
in the style ! 

With reference to the first-named of these admir- 
able discourses, the elder President Adams declared 
that " Burke is no longer entitled to the praise — 
the most consummate orator of modern times." And 
it will, I think, be admitted by any one who shall 
attentively study them, that if Mr. Webster, with all 
his powers and all his attainments, had done nothing 
else but enrich the literature of the country with 



56 

these jDerformances, he would be allowed to have 
lived not unworthily, nor in vain. When we con- 
sider that they were produced under the severe 
pressure of professional and official engagements, 
numerous and arduous enough to task even his 
intellect, we are lost in admiration of the affluence 
of his mental resources. 

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF STYLE AND MANNER. 

In all the speeches, arguments, discourses, and 
compositions of every kind proceeding from Mr. 
Webster's lips or pen, there were certain general 
characteristics which I am unwilling to dismiss without 
a passing allusion. Each, of course, had its peculiar 
merits, according to the nature and importance of 
the subject, and the care bestowed by Mr. Webster 
on the discussion ; but I find some general qualities 
pervading them all. One of them is the extreme 
sobriety of the tone, the pervading common sense, 
the entire absence of that extravagance and over- 
statement which are so apt to creep into political 
harangues, and discourses on patriotic anniversa- 
ries. His positions are taken strongly, clearly, and 
boldly, but without wordy amplification, or one-sided 
vehemence. You feel that your understanding is 
addressed, on behalf of a reasonable proposition, 
which rests neither on sentimental refinement or 



57 



rhetorical exaggeration. This is the case even in 
speeches Hke that on the Greek Revolution, where 
in enlisting the aid of classical memories and Christian 
sympathies, it was so difficult to rest within the 
bounds of moderation. 

This moderation not only characterizes Mr. Web- 
ster's parliamentary efforts, but is equally conspicuous 
in his discourses on popular and patriotic occasions, 
which, amidst all the inducements to barren declam- 
ation, are equally and always marked by the treatment 
of really important topics, in a manly and instructive 
strain of argument and reflection. 

Let it not be thought, however, that I would rep- 
resent Mr. Webster's speeches in Congress or else- 
where, as destitute, on proper occasions, of the most 
glowing appeals to the moral sentiments, or wanting, 
when the topic invites it, in any of the adornments 
of a magnificent rhetoric. Who that heard it, or has 
read it, will ever forget the desolating energy of his 
denunciation of the African slave trade, in the dis- 
course at Plymouth ; or the splendor of the apostrophe 
to Warren, in the first discourse on Bunker Hill ; or 
that to the monumental shaft and the survivors of 
the Revolution in the second; or the trumpet-tones 
of the speech placed in the lips of John Adams, in 
the eulogy on Adams and Jefferson; or the sublime 
peroration of the speech on Foot's resolution ; or 
the lyric fire of the imagery by which he illustrates 



58 



the extent of the British empire ; or the almost super- 
natural terror of his description of the force of con- 
science in the argument in Knapp's trial ? Then, how 
bright and fresh the description of Niagara! how 
beautiful the picture of the Morning, in his private 
correspondence, which, as well as his familiar conver- 
sation, were enlivened by the perpetual play of a 
joyous and fertile imagination ! In a word, what 
tone in all the grand and melting music^of our lan- 
guage is there, which is not heard in some portion 
of his speeches or writings ; while reason, sense, and 
truth compose the basis of the strain? Like the sky 
above us, it is sometimes serene and cloudless, and 
peace and love shine out from its starry depths. At 
other times the gallant streamers, in wild, fantastic 
play, — emerald, and rose, and orange, and fleecy 
white, — shoot upward from the horizon, mingle in a 
fiery canopy, at the zenith, and throw out their flick- 
ering curtains over the heavens and the earth ; while 
at other times the mustering tempest piles his lower- 
ing battlements on the sides of the north, a furious 
storm-wind rushes forth from their blazing loop-holes, 
and volleyed thunders give the signal of the elemental 
war! 

Another quality, which appears to me to be very 
conspicuous in all Mr. Webster's speeches, is the 
fairness and candor with which he treats the argument 
of his opponent, and the total absence of offensive 



59 



personality. He was accustomed, in preparing to 
argue a question at the bar, or to debate it in the 
Senate, first to state his opponent's case or argument 
in his own mind, with as much force and skill as if it 
were his own view of the subject, not deeming it 
worthy of a statesman discussing the great issues of 
the public weal, to assail and prostrate a man of 
straw, and call it a victory over his antagonist. True 
to his party associations, there was the least possible 
mingling of the partisan in his parliamentary efforts. 
No one, I think, ever truly said of him, that he had 
either misrepresented or failed to grapple fairly with 
the arerument which he undertook to confute. That 
he possessed the power of invective in the highest 
degree is well known, from the display of it on a few 
occasions, when great provocation justified and 
required it; but he habitually abstained from 
offensive personality, regarding it as an indication 
always of a bad temper, and generally of a weak 
cause. 

I notice, lastly, a sort of judicial dignity in Mr. 
Webster's mode of treating public questions, which 
may be ascribed to the high degree in which he 
united, in the range of his studies and the habits of 
his life, the jurist with the statesman. There were 
occasions, and those not a few, when, but for the 
locality from which he spoke, you might have been 
at a loss, whether you were listening to the accom- 



60 



plishecl senator unfolding the principles of the Con- 
stitution as a system of government, or the consum- 
mate jurist applying its legislative provisions to the 
practical interests of life. In the Dartmouth College 
case, and that of Gibbons and Ogden, the dryness of 
a professional argument is forgotten in the breadth 
and elevation of the constitutional principles shown 
to be involved in the issue ; while in the great 
speeches on the interpretation of the Constitution, a 
severe judicial logic darts its sunbeams into the 
deepest recesses of a written compact of government, 
intended to work out a harmonious adjustment of the 
antagonistic principles of federal and state sovereignty. 
None, I think, but a great statesman could have 
performed Mr. Webster's part before the highest 
tribunals of the land ; none but a great lawyer could 
have sustained himself as he did on the floor of the 
Senate. In fact, he rose to that elevation at which 
the law, in its highest conception, and in its versatile 
functions and agencies, as the great mediator between 
the state and the individual ; the shield by which the 
weakness of the single man is protected from the 
violence and craft of his fellows, and clothed for the 
defence of his rights with the mighty power of the 
mass ; which watches, faithful guardian, over the life 
and property of the orphan in the cradle ; spreads the 
ocgis of the public peace alike over the crowded streets 
of great cities and the solitary pathways of the wil- 



61 



derness ; which convoys the merchant and his cargo 
in safety to and from the ends of the earth ; prescribes 
the gentle humanities of civiHzation to contending 
armies; sits serene umpire of the clashing interests 
of confederated states, and moulds them all into one 
grand union; — I say Mr. Webster rose to an elevation 
at which all these attributes and functions of universal 
law, — in action alternately executive, legislative, and 
judicial ; in form successively constitution, statute, and 
decree, — are mingled into one harmonious, protecting, 
strengthening, vitalizing, sublime system; brightest 
image on earth of that ineffable Sovereign Energy, 
which, with mingled power, wisdom, and love, upholds 
and governs the universe. 

THE CENTRAL IDEA OF HIS POLITICAL SYSTEM. 

Led equally by his professional occupations and 
his political duties to make the Constitution the 
object of his profoundest study and meditation, he 
regarded it, with peculiar reverence, as a Covenant 
of Union between the members of this great and 
increasing family of States; and in that respect he 
considered it as the most important document ever 
penned by the hand of uninspired man. I need 
not tell you that this reverence for the Constitu- 
tion as the covenant of union between the States 
was the central idea of his political system, which, 



62 



however, in this, as in all other respects, aimed at 
a wise and safe balance of extreme opinions. He 
valued, as much as any man can possibly value it, 
the principle of State sovereignty. He looked upon 
the organization of these separate independent re- 
publics — of different sizes, different ages and histories, 
diflferent geographical positions, and local interests, 
as furnishing a security of inappreciable value for 
a wise and beneficent administration of local affairs, 
and the protection of individual and local rights. 
But he regarded as an approach to the perfection 
of political wisdom, the moulding of these separate 
and independent sovereignties, with all their pride 
of individual right and all their jealousy of indi- 
vidual consequence, into a well-compacted whole. 
He never weighed the two princij)les against each 
other; he held them complemental to each other, 
equally and supremely vital and essential. 

I happened, one bright starry night, to be walk- 
ing home with him at a late hour, from the Capitol 
at Washington, after a skirmishing debate, in which 
he had been speaking, at no great length, but with 
much earnestness and warmth, on the subject of the 
Constitution as forming a united government. The 
planet Jupiter, shining with unusual brilliancy, was 
in full view. He paused as we descended Capitol 
Hill, and unconsciously pursuing the train of thought 
which he had been enforcing in the Senate, pointed 



63 



to the planet and said, — "'Night unto night show- 
eth knowledge ; ' take away the independent force, 
emanating from the hand of the Supreme, which 
impels that planet onward, and it would plunge in 
hideous ruin from those beautiful skies into the 
sun ; take away the central attraction of the sun, 
and the attendant planet would shoot madly from 
its sphere ; urged and restrained by the balanced 
forces, it wheels its eternal circles through the 
heavens." 

HE CONTEMPLATES A WORK ON THE CONSTITUTION. 

His reverence for the Constitution led him to 
meditate a work in which the history of its formar 
tion and adoption should be traced, its principles 
unfolded and explained, its analogies with other 
governments investigated, its expansive fitness to 
promote the prosperity of the country for ages yet 
to come developed and maintained. His thoughts 
had long flowed in this channel. The subject was 
not only the one on which he had bestowed his 
most earnest parliamentary efforts j but it formed 
the point of reference of much of his historical and 
miscellaneous reading. He was anxious to learn what 
the experience of mankind taught on the subject of 
governments, in any degree resembling our own. As 
our fathers, in forming the Confederation, and still 



64 



more the members of the Convention which framed 
the Constitution, and especially Washington, studied 
with diligence the organization of all the former 
compacts of government, — those of the Netherlands, 
of Switzerland, and ancient Greece, — so Mr. Webster 
directed special attention to all the former leagues 
and confederacies of modern and ancient times, for 
lessons and analogies of encouragement and warning 
to his countrymen. He dwelt much on the Amphic- 
tyonic league of Greece, one of the confederacies to 
which the framers of the Constitution often referred, 
and which is frequently spoken of as a species of 
federal government. Unhappily for Greece, it had 
little claim to that character. Founded originally " 
on a confraternity of religious rites, it was expanded 
in the lapse of time into a loose political associa- 
tion, but was destitute of all the powers of an 
organized efficient government. On this subject Mr. 
Webster found a remark in Grote's History of 
Greece, which struck him as being of extreme sig- 
nificance to the people of the United States. Occa- 
sionally, says Grote, "there was a partial pretence 
for the imposing title bestowed upon the Amphic- 
tyonic league by Cicero, 'Comnume Gr^BcijB Concil- 
ium,' but we should completely misinterpret Grecian 
history, if we regarded it as a federal council habit- 
ually directing, or habitually obeyed." "And now," 
said Mr. Webster, "comes a passage, which ought 



65 



to be written in letters of gold over the door of 
the Capitol and of every State Legislature: 'Had 
there existed any such "Commune Concilium" of 
tolerable wisdom and patriotism, and had the ten- 
dencies of the Hellenic mind been capable of adapting 
themselves to it, the whole course of later Grecian 
history would probably have been altered; the Mace- 
donian kings would have remained only as respectable 
neighbors, borrowing their civilization from Greece, 
and exercising their military energies upon Thracians 
and Illyrians; while united Hellas might have main- 
tained her own territory against the conquering 
legions of Rome.' " -^ A wise and patriotic federal 
government would have preserved Greece from the 
Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legions ! 

Professional and official labors engrossed Mr. Web- 
ster's time, and left him no leisure for the execu- 
tion of his meditated work on the Constitution, — 
a theme which, as he would have treated it, tracing- 
it back to its historical fountains, and forward to 
its prophetical issues, seems to me, in the wide range 
of its topics, to embrace higher and richer elements 
of thought, for the American statesman and patriot, 
than any other not directly connected with the 
spiritual welfare of man. 

* Grote's History of Greece. Vol. II. p. 336. 
9 



66 



MAGNITUDE OF THE THEME. THE FUTURE OF THE UNION. 

What else is there, in the material system of the 
world, SO wonderful as this concealment of the 
Western Hemisphere for ages behind the mighty 
veil of waters? How could such a secret be kept 
from the foundation of the w^orld till the end of 
the fifteenth century? What so astonishing as the 
concurrence, within less than a century, of the in- 
vention of printing, the demonstration of the true 
system of the heavens, and this great world-discov- 
ery? What so mysterious as the dissociation of the 
native trilDes of this continent from the civihzed 
and civilizable races of men? What so remarkable, 
in political history, as the operation of the influences, 
now in conflict, now in harmony, under which the 
various nations of the Old World sent their children 
to occupy the New : great populations silently steal- 
ing into existence; the wilderness of one century 
swarming in the next with millions, — ascending the 
streams, crossing the mountains, struggling with a 
wild, hard nature, with savage foes, with rival settle- 
ments of foreign powers, but ever onward, onward ? 
What so propitious as this long colonial training 
in the school of chartered government? And then, 
when the fulness of time had come, what so ma- 
jestic, amidst all its vicissitudes, and all its trials, as 



67 



the Grand Sej^aration, — mutually beneficial, in its 
final results, to both parties, — the dread appeal to 
arms, that venerable Continental Congress, the august 
Declaration, the strange alliance of the oldest mon- 
archy of Europe with the infant Republic? And, 
lastly, what so worthy the admiration of men and 
angels, as the appearance of him the expected, him 
the hero, raised up to conduct the momentous con- 
flict to its auspicious issue in the Confederation, the 
Union, the Constitution? 

Is this a theme not unworthy of the pen and the 
mind of Webster ? Then consider the growth of the 
country, thus politically ushered into existence and 
organized under that Constitution, as delineated in 
his address on the laying the corner-stone of the 
extension of the Capitol, — the thirteen colonies that 
accomplished the revolution multiplied to thirty-three 
independent States, a single one of them exceeding 
in po^Dulation the old thirteen ; the narrow border of 
settlement along the coast, fenced in by France and 
the native tribes, expanded to the dimensions of the 
continent ; Louisiana, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, 
California, Oregon, — territories equal to the great 
monarchies of Europe — added to the Union ; and 
the two millions of population which warmed the im- 
agination of Burke, swelled to twenty-four millions, 
during the lifetime of Mr. Webster, and in seven 
short years, which have since elapsed, increased to 
thirty ! 



68 



With these stupendous results in his own time as 
the unit of calcuhition ; beholding under ProYidence 
with each decade of years a new people, millions 
strong, emigrants in part from the old world, but 
mainly bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, the 
children of the soil, growing up to inhabit the waste 
places of the continent, to inherit and transmit the 
rijchts and blessings which we have received from 
our fathers; recognizing in the Constitution and in 
the Union established by it the creative influence 
which, as far as human agencies go, has wrought 
these miracles of growth and progress, and which 
wraps up in sacred reserve the expansive energy 
with which the work is to be carried on and per- 
fected, — he looked forward with patriotic aspiration 
to the time when, beneath its a3gis, the whole wealth 
of our civilization would be poured out, not only to 
fill up the broad interstices of settlement, if I may 
so express myself, in the old thirteen and their 
young and thriving sister States, already organized 
in the West, but, in the lapse of time to found a 
hundred new republics in the valley of the Missouri 
and Ijcyond the Rocky Mountains, till our letters 
and our arts, our schools and our churches, our laws 
and our liberties, shall be carried from the Arctic 
circle to the tropics ; " from the rising of the sun to 
the o-oinii" down thereof" 



69 



VIEWS OF THE PRESENT. 



This prophetic glance, not merely at the impending, 
but the distant futute, this reliance on the fulfilment 
of the great design of Providence, illustrated through 
our whole history, to lavish upon the people of this 
country the accumulated blessings of all former 
stages of human progress, made him more tolerant 
of the tardy and irregular advances and temporary 
v\^anderings from the path of what he deemed a wise 
and sound policy, than those fervid spirits, who dwell 
exclusively in the present, and make less allowance 
for the gradual operation of moral influences. This 
was the case in reference to the great sectional 
controversy, which now so sharply divides and so 
violently agitates the country. He not only confi- 
dently anticipated, what the lapse of seven years 
since his decease has witnessed and is witnessing, 
that the newly acquired and the newly organized 
territories of the Union would grow up into free 
States ; but, in common with all, or nearly all, the 
statesmen of the last generation, he believed that 
free labor would ultimately prevail throughout the 
country. He thought he saw that, in the operation 
of the same causes which have produced this result 
in the Middle and Eastern States, it was visibly 
taking place in the States north of the cotton-growing 
region ; and he inclined to the opinion that there 



70 



also, iiiidor the influence of physieal and economical 
causes, free labor would eventually ))e found most 
productive, and would, therefore, be ultimately estab- 
lished. 

For these reasons, bearing in mind what all admit, 
that the complete solution of the mighty problem 
which now so greatly tasks the prudence and pat- 
riotism of the wisest and best in the land, is beyond 
the delegated powers of the general government; 
that it depends, as far as the States are concerned, 
on their independent legislation, and that it is, of 
all others, a subject in reference to which public 
opinion and public sentiment will most powerfully 
influence the law; that much in the lapse of time, 
without law, is likely to be brought about by degrees, 
and gradually done and permitted, as in Missouri at 
the present day, while nothing is to be hoped from 
external interference, whether of exhortation or 
rebuke ; that in all human affairs controlled by self- 
governing communities, extreme opinions and extreme 
courses, on the one hand, generally lead to extreme 
opinions and extreme courses on the other ; and 
that nothing will more contribute to the earliest 
practicable relief of the country from this most pro- 
lific source of conflict and estrangement, than to 
prevent its ))eing introduced into our party organ- 
izations, — he deprecated its being allowed to find 
a ])1;k'(' auiontr the ])()liti('al issues of the day, north 



71 



or south; and seeking a platform on which honest 
and patriotic men might meet and stand, he thought 
he had found it, where our fathers did, in the Con- 
stitution. 

It is true, that in interpreting the fundamental 
law on this subject, a diversity of opinion betw^een 
the two sections of the Union presents itself This 
has ever been the case, first or last, in relation to 
every great question that has divided the country. 
It is the unfailing incident of constitutions, written 
or unwritten ; an evil to be dealt with in good faith, 
by prudent and enlightened men in both sections 
of the Union, seeking, as Washington sought, the 
pubhc good, and giving expression to the patriotic 
common sense of the people. 

Such, I have reason to believe, were the principles 
entertained by Mr. Webster; not certainly those 
best calculated to wm a temporary popularity in 
any part of the Union, in times of passionate sectional 
agitation, which, between the extremes of opinion, 
leaves no middle ground for moderate counsels. If 
any one could have fomid, and could have trodden 
such ground with success, he would seem to have 
been qualified to do it, by his transcendent talent, 
his mature experience, his approved temper and 
calmness, and his tried patriotism. If he failed of 
finding such a path for himself or the country, — 
while we thoughtfully await what time and an all- 



72 



wise Providence has in store for ourselves and our 
children, — let us remember that his attempt was 
the highest and the purest which can engage the 
thoughts of a statesman and a patriot, — peace on 
earth, good will toward men; harmony and !)roth- 
erly love among the children of our common 
country. 

And oh, my friends ! if among those, who, dif- 
fering from him on this or any other subject, have 
yet, with generous forgetfulness of that which sep- 
arated you, and kindly remembrance of all you held 
in common, come up this day to do honor to his 
memory, there are any who suppose that he cher- 
ished less tenderly than yourselves the great ideas 
of Liberty, Humanity, and Brotherhood ; that because 
he was faithful to the duties which he inferred from 
the Constitution and the Law, to which he looked 
for the government of civil society, he was less 
sensible than yourselves to the broader relations 
and deeper sympathies which unite us to our fellow- 
creatures, as brethren of one family, and children 
of one Heavenly Father, — believe me, you do his 
memory a grievous wrong. 

PERSONAL CHARACTER. 

This is not the occasion to dwell upon the per- 
sonal character of Mr. Webster, on the fascination 






of his social intercourse, or the charm of hi« domestic 
Hfe. Something I could have said on his compan- 
ionable disposition and habits, his genial temper, 
the resources and attractions of his conversation, his 
love of natm-e, alike in her wild and cultivated 
aspects, and his keen perception of the beauties of 
this fair world in which we live ; something of his 
devotion to agricultural pursuits, which, next to his 
professional and puljlic duties, formed the occupation 
of his Ufe ; something of his fondness for athletic 
and manly sports and exercises ; something of his 
friendships, and of his attachments closer than 
friendships, — the son, the brother, the husband, and 
the father; something of the joys and sorrows of 
his home ; of the strength of his reUgious convictions, 
his testimony to the truth of the Christian revela- 
tion ; the tenderness and sublimity of the parting 
scene. Something on these topics I have elsewhere 
said, and may not here repeat. 

Some other things, my friends, with your indul- 
gence, standing here to perform this last office to his 
memory, I would say ; thoughts, memories, which 
crowd upon me, — too vivid to be repressed, too 
personal, almost, to be uttered. 

On the 17th of July, 1804, a young man from 
New Hampshire arrived in Boston, all but penniless, 
and all but friendless. He was twenty-two years of 
age, and had come to take the first steps in the 



10 



74 



career of life at the capital of New England. Three 
days after arriving in Boston, he presented himself, 
without letters of recommendation, to Mr. Christo- 
pher Gore, then just returned from England, after 
an official residence of some years, and solicited a 
place in his office, as a clerk. His only introduction 
was by a yomig man as little known to Mr. Gore 
as himself, and who went to pronounce his name, 
which he did so indistinctly as not to be heard. 
His slender figure, striking countenance, large dark 
eye, and massy brow, his general appearance indicat- 
ing a delicate organization,* his manly carriage and 
modest demeanor, arrested attention and inspired 
confidence. His humble suit was granted, he was 
received into the office, and had been there a week 
before Mr. Gore learned that his name was Daniel 
Webster! His older brother, — older in years, but 
later in entering life, — (for wdiose education Daniel, 
while teacher of the Academy at Fryeburg, had 
drudged till midnight in the office of the Register 
of Deeds), at that time taught a small school in 
Short street (now Kingston street), in Boston; and 
while he was in attendance at the commencement 
at Dartmouth, in 1804, to receive his degree, Daniel 
supplied his place. At that school, at the age of 
ten, I was then a pupil, and there commenced a 

* Description by Mrs. Eliza Buckminsler Lee, " Webster's Private Cor- 

respoiuU'uce," i. 438. 



75 



friendship which lasted, without interruption or chill, 
while his Hfe lasted ; of which, while mine lasts, the 
grateful recollection will never perish. From that 
time forward, I knew, and as I knew, I respected, I 
honored, I loved him. I saw him at all seasons and 
on all occasions, in the flush of public triumph, in 
the intimacy of the fireside, m the most unreserved 
interchange of personal confidence ; in health and in 
sickness, in sorrow and m joy ; when early honors 
began to wreathe his brow, and in after-life through 
most of the important scenes of his public career. I 
saw him on occasions that show the manly strength, 
and, what is better, the manly weakness of the human 
heart; and I declare this day, in the presence of 
Heaven and of men, that I never heard from him 
the expression of a wish unbecoming a good citizen 
and a patriot, — the utterance of a word unworthy 
a gentleman and a Christian ; that I never knew 
a more generous spmt, a safer adviser, a warmer 
friend. 

Do you ask me if he had faults ? T answer, he 
was a man. Do you again ask me the question ? 
Look in vour own breast, and o-et the answer there. 
Do you still insist on explicit information ? Let me 
give it to you, my immaculate friend, in the words 
which were spoken eighteen hundred years ago to 
certain who trusted in themselves that they were 
righteous and despised others: — 



76 



Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a 
Pharisee, and the other a })ublican. 

The Pharisee stood and ])rayed thus with himself: God, I 
thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, 
adulterers, or even as this publican. 

I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. 

And the publican standing afar off, would not lift up so much 
as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, 
God, be merciful to me a sinner. 

I tell you, This man went down to his house justified rather 
than the other. 

Yes, he had some of the fixiilts of a lofty spirit, 
a genial temperament, an open hand, and a warm 
heart; he had none of the faults of a grovelling, 
mean, and malignant natm^e. He had especially the 
"last infirmity of noble mind," and had no doubt 
raised an aspiring eye to the highest object of 
political ambition. But he did it in the honest 
pride of a capacity equal to the station, and with 
a consciousness that he should reflect back the honor 
which it conferred. He might say, with Burke, that 
"he had no arts but honest arts;" and if he sought 
the highest honors of the state, he did it by unsur- 
passed talent, laborious service, and patriotic devotion 
to the public good. 

It wjis not given to him, nny more than to the 
other mem))ers of the great triumvirate with whohi 
his name is habitually associated, to attain the object 
of their ambition ; but posterity will do them justice, 
and begins already to discharge the debt of respect 
and gratitude. A noble mausoleum in honor of Clay, 



77 



and his statue by Hart, are in progress ; the statue 
of Calhoun, by Powers, adorns the Court House 
in Charleston, and a magnificent monument to his 
memory is in preparation ; and we present you this 
day, fellow-citizens, the Statue of Webster, in enduring 
bronze, on a pedestal of granite from his native State, 
the noble countenance modelled from life, at the 
meridian of his days and his fame, and to his own 
satisfaction, and his person reproduced, from faithful 
recollection, by the oldest and most distinguished 
of the living artists of the country. He sleeps by 
the multitudinous ocean, which he himself so much 
resembled, in its mighty movement and its mighty 
repose ; but his monumental form shall henceforward 
stand sentry at the portals, of the Capitol, — the 
right hand pomting to that symbol of the Union on 
which the left reposes, and his imperial gaze directed, 
with the hopes of the country, to the boundless 
AVest. In a few short years, we, whose eyes have 
rested on his majestic person, whose ears have drunk 
in the music of his clarion voice, shall have gone to 
our rest ; but our children, for ages to come, as they 
dwell with awe-struck gaze upon the monumental 
bronze, shall say. Oh that we could have seen, oh 
that we could have heard, the great original ! 

Two hundred and twenty-nine years ago, this day, 
our beloved city received, from the General Court of 
the Colony, the honored name of Boston. On the 



78 



Ions: roll of those whom she has welcomed to her 
nurturmg bosom, is there a name which shines 
with a brighter lustre than his ? Seventy-two years 
ago, this clay, the Constitution of the United States 
was tendered to the acceptance of the people by 
George Washington. Who, of all' the gifted and pat- 
riotic of the land, that have adorned the interval, has 
done more to unfold its principles, maintain its 
purity, and to promote its duration? 

Here, then, beneath the walls of the Capitol of old 
Massachusetts ; here, within the sight of those fair 
New England villages ; here, in the near vicinity of 
the graves of those who planted the germs of all 
this palmy growth ; here, within the sound of sacred 
bells ; here, in the presence of this vast multitude, — 
we raise this monument, with loving hearts, to the 
Statesman, the Patriot, the Fellow-Citizen, the neigh- 
bor, the friend. Long may it guard the approach to 
our halls of council ! long may it look out upon a 
prosperous, a happy, and a united country ! and, if 
days of trial and disaster should come, and the arm 
of flesh should fail, doubt not that the monumental 
form would descend from its pedestal, to stand in the 
front rank of the peril, and the bronze lips repeat 
the cry of the living voice, — " Liberty and Union, 
now and forever, one and inseparable." 



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